


Absolution

by SlippinMickeys



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Angry Sex, F/M, First Time, MSR, Post-Episode: s06e12 One Son, RST, make-up sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-17
Updated: 2019-08-17
Packaged: 2020-09-02 12:40:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20276059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SlippinMickeys/pseuds/SlippinMickeys
Summary: “The bath had done nothing but make her think about the decon shower they’d been forced to take 48 hours prior and from there her mind wandered to lustful places. Places she tried to keep secreted away.”





	Absolution

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Katherinexx1](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katherinexx1/gifts).

> I got my prompt from KatherineXX1, whose chose episode One Son. She wrote: “... I also love the shower scene in One Son... a fic based on that would be nice too.”
> 
> I know you wanted romantic smut, (which I promise I eventually deliver!), but One Son is an episode with such high tension between Mulder and Scully (and Diana Fucking Fowley!), I would have been remiss if I didn’t initially address it.
> 
> I hope you enjoy it, Katherine!

———

Dana Scully was so angry she could spit nails.

There was no contagion. She was sure of very little at this point, but all of her training had at least convinced her of that. The chances of Cassandra Spender being the Typhoid Mary of some unknown alien virus were slim to none. And now she was dead.

Whatever her endgame was, Diana Fowley’s initial maneuvers were transparent as air. _ Confusion: _break into Mulder’s apartment with guns blazing. Use the bio contaminant suits to confuse and distract. _ Humiliation:_ put the platonic partners into a decontamination shower, naked, together. Make them undress and dress in the same room under the watchful eyes of men and women in space-like suits. Amp up embarrassment to the nth degree. The next moves in her playbook would have been _ Divide._ _Conquer._

It was a high school girl’s game with a big budget. It was all so obvious, she could see it as clearly as she’d been trained to see disease. And Mulder had been playing into her hand like a tame squirrel at the park. Even the Gunmen’s evidence didn’t sway him. The woman had clearly been manipulating him for as long as she’d known him.

Now it appeared that Fowley was gone. She’d up and disappeared like a cough into the wind.

Scully had tried to convince Mulder that Fowley was only looking out for herself, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He had been dismissive, patronizing; the worst version of himself.

“I wouldn’t bet against him,” she’d said to Kersh--the most support she’d been able to throw Mulder’s way while she sat in his office, fuming over the whole affair. 

She’d gone home after the meeting with every intention of calming down, taking a relaxing bath and going to bed, hoping to wake up in the morning with a relaxed and focused mindset.

It hadn’t worked. The bath had done nothing but make her think about the decon shower they’d been forced to take 48 hours prior and from there her mind wandered to lustful places. Places she tried to keep secreted away. All she could think about were the hard planes of his chest and back, the water sluicing over his skin like sweat.

She’d seen him naked before—undressed him herself at least once—but he’d always been in some state of medical distress. Here, he had been robust, fit, his skin sun-kissed and healthy, his eyes sharp and searching. She’d caught him looking at her at least once.

It was that last look, when he’d raked his eyes down her body before she turned away that stuck in her mind. She’d seen it in his eyes, for the first time she could ever remember: desire. For her. It had only been for a split second, but she’d seen it. Why it had to come now, when she was angrier with him than she’d ever been, was a question for the goddamn ages. 

She heard a sharp knock on the door just as she was reaching a hand between her legs in the warm water and stood up quickly, the water sloshing out of the tub in a wave. She grabbed a silk robe from behind the bathroom door and put it on. Another sharp knock.

She answered the door angry. Het up with fury and want, her skin fairly cracking with frustrated energy.

Mulder.

“Scully?”

She opened the door wide, left him standing it, and stalked back into her apartment, heading for the kitchen.

After a moment, she heard him come in, the door snicking closed behind him as she reached into a cabinet for a mug without any real intention of filling it—she just needed to busy her hands.

“We’re back on the X-Files,” he finally said, his tone one of barely tempered excitement. “Skinner got the word from Kersh as soon as you left the office. 

She slammed the mug onto the countertop and whirled on him.

“You couldn’t have just called?” she spat.

His eyes went wide. He seemed surprised that she wasn’t as excited as he was.

She wanted to smack him across the face. She wanted to run her hands over his shoulders and cleave the leather jacket off his back in one motion. She wanted to fight him. Fuck him. And she couldn’t decide if she was more angry at him or herself for all of it.

“You’re still pissed,” he said, a statement.

“Give me one goddamn reason why I shouldn’t be,” she said.

He held a conciliatory hand up and took a few steps toward her. When he got close, she saw his nostrils flare and she wondered if he could smell her desire. She felt her nipples pucker at the thought, rubbing against the silk of her robe. She was aching, her whole body tight as a bowstring.

He looked at her a moment.

“I can’t.”

It wasn’t much, but it made her feel perhaps fractionally better.

“Go home, Mulder,” she said on a sigh, resigned to being angry and sexually frustrated the rest of the night, the week, the month. Forever.

“No,” he said, taking a step closer.

He had a sharp look in his eye, one that made her take a half a step back. She bumped into the countertop. 

“What are you doing?” she asked and he kept on coming, getting into her personal space. It was intentionally intrusive; throwing her off.

“Do you want to hit me?” he asked her, his voice was low and had a dangerous quality to it.

She wanted to do a lot more than hit him.

Finally, he got so close to her, she put a hand out to stop him. She pushed on his chest, but he didn’t move.

“I’m your partner, Mulder,” she said, pushing again, “_ I _ am.”

“You are,” his voice almost a whisper.

“Don’t placate me,” she said, “don’t say what you think I want to hear. I have your back, Mulder, and I need you to have mine.”

“The thing is,” he said, leaning down like he was about to kiss her, and she felt herself getting more aroused, “your back is part of the problem.”

She arched an eyebrow at him, unable to do more.

“I can’t stop thinking about it,” he went on, “God Scully, rail on me if you need to, but seeing you in that decon shower… I can’t stop thinking about every part of you.”

She kissed him then, hard, without pretense. She had her tongue in his mouth before she could produce a coherent thought, and he’d reacted likewise, scooping her up and sitting her on the countertop, his hands roaming everywhere. She wrapped her legs around his torso and they clashed, breathing hard, their actions frenzied and raw.

“Bedroom. Now,” she said, when he stopped kissing her long enough to drag his lips down her throat, nipping at her pulse point, not ungently. He hoisted his hands under her ass and picked her up like she was nothing, not breaking contact as he navigated his way to her bed.

He set her down atop it and was on top of her in one motion, his hands finding their way inside of her robe, lifting and kneading her breasts urgently.

She had never been more turned on in her life. And she was still fucking angry at him.

She reached down and undid the button of his jeans, reaching her hand inside of them and wrapping her hand around an impressively sized erection.

Finally he pulled back, breathing hard.

“One second,” he said, “one second.”

His shirt had come off at some point and his lips were swollen, red. His tongue darted out to lick them as he struggled to catch his breath. He pulled back and looked at her, his eyes softening, searching hers. She still had a hand around his newly freed cock.

“Are we really going to do this?” he asked, running a thumb tenderly along her cheekbone.

She didn’t want tender. She wasn’t in the mood for affection. She was feeling piqued. Contrary. Not inclined to give him anything he wanted. If she were being completely honest with herself, she wanted to fuck the memory of Diana Fowley completely from his brain.

“No,” she said, turning in his arms, her robe slipping down and off her arms, and she pressed her ass into his groin, “like this.”

“Jesus, Scully,” he said, breathless, kicking off his jeans. 

“Now, Mulder,” she said, an order.

He let out a hiss as he entered her, hard and sharp, his fingers digging into her hips. She could feel her anger transferring to him, felt it overtake him, too.

He pounded into her, feral, fast. She thought she could feel every vein and ridge on his penis scraping her, in and out. Their fucking—and she could call it nothing else—was raw, elemental. How odd that it felt like penance.

After a minute or two he slowed and eventually stopped, his penis still inside her, his hands still on her hips. She looked over her shoulder at him, willing him to keep going, feeling her anger waning and willing it to keep going, too.

“Scully,” he whispered, his eyes looking directly into hers, hooded, hurt, her name an apology on his lips.

She leaned forward slightly and he slipped out of her, and then she turned on one knee and they sat kneeling in front of one another, as naked and vulnerable as they had been in the decon shower.

He reached out a hand and once again cupped her cheek. She didn’t pull away this time.

“I didn’t want it to be like this,” he whispered.

“But you wanted it?” she whispered back.

“God, Scully,” he said, “always.”

She looked down, her anger dissipating, leaving her feeling empty and spent.

“Me too,” she said, her voice barely a whisper, “…me neither.”

He moved toward her on his knees, rubbed his hands up and down her arms once, bent until his forehead was resting against hers.

“I’m sorry,” he finally said.

“You should be.”

“I know.”

She let that hang in the air for a moment and then reached up to touch his face, a caress; absolution.

She finally looked up, her eyes searching his, finding atonement, finding grace.

He slowly lowered his lips to hers, as softly now as they had been rough earlier.

She leaned slowly back on the bed, pulling him with her, not breaking contact, the warm, firm weight of his body over hers pressed comfortably into her, settling her, grounding her. She felt her equilibrium shift back into place.

It occurred to her then what was happening, what had been six years in the making, and she smiled (for the first time in days) into his lips and he smiled back into hers, the realization dawning on him too.

“Mulder,” she whispered and he answered her with a kiss, guiding himself to her entrance, slowly sinking into her with a worshipful sigh.

When he was sheathed to the hilt, she ran her hands over his back as she’d always wanted to, scraping lightly with her nails, feeling a kind of religious awe that her day had started one way and was ending so paradoxically another.

They seemed to know what each other wanted, needed, as though they’d been doing this for years, and perhaps in every other way that counted, they had.

If sex could be an apology, this was a benediction. Mulder’s hands rove over her gently, every touch a caress; his hands painting her skin with a reverence as soft as a watercolor. 

He rocked slowly into her and eventually pulled one leg up over his hip, looking into her eyes as he did so. The new angle was exquisite, and she felt tears prick the corners of her eyes, a new urgency picking up with each puff of breath.

She felt her climax approaching and could sense that he was close too, and she pulled him as close to her as she could, pressing her mouth to his shoulder and biting down as the wave broke urgently over them both.

Once their breathing had slowed, she pulled back, ran her fingers gently over the light tooth marks she’d left on his skin and felt whatever punishment this was had been exacted.

XxXxXxXxXxX

They had been dozing maybe twenty minutes when Mulder’s cell phone rang.

He looked over at her as if for permission, and she waved a hand at him. He answered.

He didn’t talk, only listened, and she could hear a deep voice on the other end, but couldn’t make out what it was saying. After a few moments he depressed the end call button and looked at the phone before finally speaking.

“That was Skinner,” he said, “Jeffery Spender has been shot.”

And like that, any residual anger left her body. This Truth that everyone was after, at what cost did it come? It came in pain. In secrets. In lives.

She rolled over to him as he set his phone down on the bedside table and tucked herself under his arm, letting his warmth ease into her. He pulled her close and she felt him smell the crown of her head. They were silent, acclimatizing to this new, different world they found themselves in. 

After a few minutes, Mulder finally spoke, his voice a low mumble, his breath puffing over her ear.

“I don’t know where our work will take us, Scully,” he said, “and I don’t know what our future looks like, but I’ll try to be worthy of it. I’ll try to be worthy of you.”

She laid a gentle hand on his chest over his heart, and sent up a silent prayer. 

THE END


End file.
